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In the Sunday Herald, we wrote about tonight's draft and the new rules governing it. Here's a selection from that story in advance of tonight's first and compensation rounds, in which the Sox have three picks ...

When the Red Sox selected Texas high school shortstop Will Middlebrooks in the fifth round of the 2007 draft, he was signed, sealed and delivered to play quarterback at Texas A&M. Fitting him for a Red Sox uniform would require some serious cash.

Major League Baseball's slot recommendation for the 174th overall pick that year was around $130,000. The Red Sox, recognizing Middlebrook's potential, said, "thanks for the recommendation," ignored it, and signed Middlebrooks for $925,000.

Needless to say, their aggressiveness paid off. Middlebrooks is a Rookie of the Year favorite who has helped keep the big league lineup afloat this season amidst a rash of injuries.

So why bring this up now? Because under the new draft rules, Middlebrooks might very well be in an NFL training camp right now.

The draft has received an overhaul that could negatively impact big-spending teams like the Red Sox.

Under the previous rules, first-round talents like Middlebrooks who dropped to the middle or later rounds could still cash in if the team drafting them ignored MLB's slot recommendations.

The Red Sox have made a living this way since the Theo Epstein/Ben Cherington front office took control in 2003. While they whiffed badly in their first attempt to game the system -- high school left-hander Mike Rozier received $1.575 million in the 12th round of the 2004 draft, and then was out of baseball four years later after making just one start at Double A -- they've since scored plenty of hits.

They gave 39th overall pick Anthony Ranaudo $2.55 million in 2010 when slot was about $850,000. In 2008, they gave fifth rounder Ryan Westmoreland $2 million in the fifth round, and until a devastating brain injury, he was one of the best prospects in the game. A year before that, they snagged power-hitting first baseman Anthony Rizzo in the sixth round for $325,000, which was almost triple slot.

Those days, however, are gone, under a new system that gives each team a draft budget. The Red Sox, for example, have $6.884 million to spend on their first 12 picks, according to Baseball America, and even then, it's not that simple.

The money is divvied up by pick, and if a team fails to sign a player, the money at his spot disappears. The Red Sox have $1.75 million to spend on the 24th overall pick. If they don't sign him, they lose that money (it should be noted however, that if they sign him for less, they can apply the difference to future picks).

They have $1.575 million for the No. 31 overall pick, $1.394 million for No. 37, and the figures drop from there, down to $125,000 for the 331st overall pick.

Every player taken after the 10th round can be signed for $100,000 or less, so the days of giving $1.5 million to a 12th-rounder are basically history.

That said, teams can spend over slot, but the penalties are so onerous, it's hard to imagine many will. Spend five percent more than slot, and a team will be taxed at a 75 percent rate on the overage.

Exceed slot by anything more than 5 percent, and then the real penalties kick in, starting with the loss of a first-round pick in the next draft. They get precipitously steeper from there, with an overage of more than 15 percent resulting in the loss of two first-round picks.

"We're going to try to work within the rules to get the best possible return, and picks are very valuable so I don't forsee a scenario where we would be willing to give up a pick," Cherington said. "That's one of the potential penalties for going over. Aside from that, we're just going to work within the rules, as every other team is, to get the best return."

What this means for the Red Sox over the next few days is multifold. For one, signability now takes on paramount importance. Scouting directors who can't sign first round picks will be putting their jobs on the line, since that money disappears.

But going hand in hand with that is the fact that the draft's most talented players now have the greatest incentive to be chosen as high as possible in the first round, since that's where the biggest bonuses reside. The days of a player like Ranaudo slipping because teams feared his demands may become a thing of the past.

"Over the course of the last several years, going back eight, 10 years, we've done a pretty good job in that pick 15-20 to pick 120 range," Cherington said. "A lot of years we've had picks in that range and we've gotten some good players in that range. Often the players we're taking and signing in that range, we've signed to traditional signing bonuses. There's been a couple of exceptions. We've done some things differently later in the draft. If anything, I think the changes, not just for the Red Sox, but industry wide, there will be some differences later in the draft, but the process of scouting and getting the board set up is pretty consistent."